The backbone of Venture Café – come meet the community and make connections with all different kinds of innovators. How will you make your serendipitous moment come true?
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” —Goodhart’s Law
Of course you need to measure. But what?
Which numbers give us something meaningful, and which are there to sell us more of their thing rather than helping us sell more of ours?
Let’s look at some real-life brand-building examples of what works, get a clear idea of how to separate the signal from the noise, and put our attention on the things that matter.
Iryna Piotrowska, formerly a Senior Program Manager at Google, spent her days doing what most program managers know all too well: writing status reports, chasing technical backlogs with engineers, and trying to catch risk before it becomes a fire drill. What sets her apart is how she quietly rebuilt her own workflow around agentic AI, using Gemini alongside Claude and ChatGPT to automate the parts of the job that used to eat her week.
In this session, Iryna shares a practical, ground level look at what it actually looks like to implement AI tools at scale, not as a sweeping mandate from leadership but as one person's perspective on building efficiency across teams. She will walk through how she used AI to research and draft reports and slides, spot early risk signals, and clean up backlogs full of duplicates before they slowed a team down. Attendees will leave with daily productivity wins they can put to use immediately, along with a clearer sense of which processes are worth automating first.
Designed for program and project managers as well as the senior leaders who support them, this session offers a grounded, personal account of what AI adoption looks like in practice, not in theory.
Municipalities across the world face a myriad of challenges, from providing affordable housing and solutions for
unhoused individuals, to policing effectively, to providing municipal services that are both powerful and cost-effective. The options municipalities have to innovate are sometimes limited, given limited budgets and skill-sets. But once in a while there is a city that has ideas and resources. One such city is Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of the denser cities in the US, and one of the better-funded cities. It is led by a council of nine citizens.
In this session, which will also be recorded for Tim's podcast Where Innovation Happens, Tim will interview MIT-graduate Cambridge City Councillor Burhan Azeem, who is also a candidate for State Senate. The conversation will focus on the key challenges of the city and how innovation can be leveraged, and incorporated, to help it do its job better.
Market Like a Hotshot returns to Venture Café for another high energy live recording, and this time, Jeff DeSocio and James Feudo are turning things up a notch.
You're the guest! Join the hosts in the Sonata Room during the Thursday Gathering for a live taping of Market Like a Hotshot, an intimate conversation with the hosts as they riff on each other, take your questions, and share practical marketing insights founders and innovators can use right away to grow their ventures and personal brands. This is a small, cozy setup, the room seats just six, so plan to arrive early if you want a seat at the table. Think less big stage, more pulling up a chair with the hosts themselves.
Fresh off a hugely successful live episode with Carrie Mays, a social media director who helps growing businesses build digital presence and visibility, the Hotshots are back in Cambridge to connect with the Venture Café community, spotlight local innovators, and deliver the kind of actionable marketing advice that matters for startups and founders navigating growth.
Whether you are a founder, technologist, or creator looking to sharpen your storytelling and visibility, this is a chance to talk shop directly with the Hotshots in a relaxed, thoughtful setting.
Space is limited, so come find the Sonata Room early and settle in for a genuine conversation about building and marketing smarter.
Tim Rowe is the Founder and CEO of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) and CIC Health. CIC is a leading builder and operator of innovation communities currently in 9 cities, and is currently the largest operator of commercial shared wet labs on the east coast. CIC Health operates a national scale COVID-19 testing marketplace, and, previously, mass vaccination sites in MA. Tim is Chair of the Venture Cafe Global Institute, Co-Founder of LabCentral, a non-profit which is the world's largest shared wet laboratory as well as Chair of MassRobotics, a non-profit hub for the sensing, IOT and automation industries. Tim is Co-Founder and Past President of the Kendall Square Association. Earlier in his career, Tim served as a Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a Manager with the Boston Consulting Group and an analyst with the Mitsubishi Research Institute. Tim speaks Spanish and Japanese fluently, as well as basic Mandarin Chinese. Tim holds an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a BA from Amherst College.
The backbone of Venture Café – come meet the community and make connections with all different kinds of innovators. How will you make your serendipitous moment come true?
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” —Goodhart’s Law
Of course you need to measure. But what?
Which numbers give us something meaningful, and which are there to sell us more of their thing rather than helping us sell more of ours?
Let’s look at some real-life brand-building examples of what works, get a clear idea of how to separate the signal from the noise, and put our attention on the things that matter.
Iryna Piotrowska, formerly a Senior Program Manager at Google, spent her days doing what most program managers know all too well: writing status reports, chasing technical backlogs with engineers, and trying to catch risk before it becomes a fire drill. What sets her apart is how she quietly rebuilt her own workflow around agentic AI, using Gemini alongside Claude and ChatGPT to automate the parts of the job that used to eat her week.
In this session, Iryna shares a practical, ground level look at what it actually looks like to implement AI tools at scale, not as a sweeping mandate from leadership but as one person's perspective on building efficiency across teams. She will walk through how she used AI to research and draft reports and slides, spot early risk signals, and clean up backlogs full of duplicates before they slowed a team down. Attendees will leave with daily productivity wins they can put to use immediately, along with a clearer sense of which processes are worth automating first.
Designed for program and project managers as well as the senior leaders who support them, this session offers a grounded, personal account of what AI adoption looks like in practice, not in theory.
Municipalities across the world face a myriad of challenges, from providing affordable housing and solutions for
unhoused individuals, to policing effectively, to providing municipal services that are both powerful and cost-effective. The options municipalities have to innovate are sometimes limited, given limited budgets and skill-sets. But once in a while there is a city that has ideas and resources. One such city is Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of the denser cities in the US, and one of the better-funded cities. It is led by a council of nine citizens.
In this session, which will also be recorded for Tim's podcast Where Innovation Happens, Tim will interview MIT-graduate Cambridge City Councillor Burhan Azeem, who is also a candidate for State Senate. The conversation will focus on the key challenges of the city and how innovation can be leveraged, and incorporated, to help it do its job better.
Market Like a Hotshot returns to Venture Café for another high energy live recording, and this time, Jeff DeSocio and James Feudo are turning things up a notch.
You're the guest! Join the hosts in the Sonata Room during the Thursday Gathering for a live taping of Market Like a Hotshot, an intimate conversation with the hosts as they riff on each other, take your questions, and share practical marketing insights founders and innovators can use right away to grow their ventures and personal brands. This is a small, cozy setup, the room seats just six, so plan to arrive early if you want a seat at the table. Think less big stage, more pulling up a chair with the hosts themselves.
Fresh off a hugely successful live episode with Carrie Mays, a social media director who helps growing businesses build digital presence and visibility, the Hotshots are back in Cambridge to connect with the Venture Café community, spotlight local innovators, and deliver the kind of actionable marketing advice that matters for startups and founders navigating growth.
Whether you are a founder, technologist, or creator looking to sharpen your storytelling and visibility, this is a chance to talk shop directly with the Hotshots in a relaxed, thoughtful setting.
Space is limited, so come find the Sonata Room early and settle in for a genuine conversation about building and marketing smarter.
Tim Rowe is the Founder and CEO of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) and CIC Health. CIC is a leading builder and operator of innovation communities currently in 9 cities, and is currently the largest operator of commercial shared wet labs on the east coast. CIC Health operates a national scale COVID-19 testing marketplace, and, previously, mass vaccination sites in MA. Tim is Chair of the Venture Cafe Global Institute, Co-Founder of LabCentral, a non-profit which is the world's largest shared wet laboratory as well as Chair of MassRobotics, a non-profit hub for the sensing, IOT and automation industries. Tim is Co-Founder and Past President of the Kendall Square Association. Earlier in his career, Tim served as a Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a Manager with the Boston Consulting Group and an analyst with the Mitsubishi Research Institute. Tim speaks Spanish and Japanese fluently, as well as basic Mandarin Chinese. Tim holds an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a BA from Amherst College.